Steel And Flame (Book 1)

by Damien Lake

  The afternoon continued in the same vein. Marik watched as two other men were dispatched in similar fashion. He claimed no enemies himself. Fraser asked about kills anytime they encountered him amidst the trees before he vanished to resume his own hunt or to find the other unit members.

  Two candlemarks after they had entered the underbrush-choked woods, Marik estimated they had cut the rover party in half. Still searching for remnants of Fielo’s patrol party, he and three others entered a clearing overgrown with knee high grass and fallen logs. Marik’s neck suddenly crawled, wrinkling in a most peculiar way, and he shouted to the others.

  They did not bother to question him. All four dove back behind the tree line at the same time a whistling arrow storm swarmed through the space they had been. A jolt at his side made Marik’s heart stop when an arrow glanced off his sword sheath. The arrows cut through the air at top speed, shrieking far louder among in the trees than on the archery range in Kingshome. Shouts to other unit members brought them closer to aid, yet kept them outside the immediate danger zone.

  They were trapped behind the trees bordering the clearing’s edge. The four were in a highly dangerous position. Marik wanted to retreat further into the wood, to put additional cover between himself and the unseen archers. But were they still there or had they retreated after the initial volley? No way to tell.

  Closest to him huddled Ashlin, a man Marik knew only by name, he being one of the loners who kept to himself. The slender tree Ashlin had scrambled behind did not fully shelter him. That clearly made him nervous. He glanced around hastily looking for better cover. Marik watched him closely.

  Ashlin spotted a fallen tree larger than his own farther back from the clearing and closer to Marik. He gathered his courage, then made a quick dash. The moment he broke cover, the arrow songs renewed.

  Arrows, far too many to be only the survivors of the rover party, cut straight toward Ashlin. As fast as he ran, they flew faster.

  Most shafts missed, sparing Marik the sight of a man turning into a pincushion before his eyes. One punctured Ashlin’s left hand and another pierced his throat. His momentum carried his stumbling body to Marik’s tree. Ashlin fell to his hands and knees, denying the fact he was already dead. He clutched at his wheezing throat with his good hand. A choking spasm brought a bloody fountain erupting from his mouth that drenched Marik’s breeches from the knees down.

  Ashlin turned as he fell still. He lay on his back, his empty eyes staring at the younger King with blood still dribbled from his mouth’s corner. Marik did his best not to move a muscle.

  Throughout the day he had kept his mind focused. He hunted men alongside hardened mercenaries and had no wish to look the green youngling, stumbling, shuddering, nervous and frightened. All winter he had trained for the purpose of killing men, knowing full well that his life could be the one prematurely ended. But this… For the first time that day, a fearful shiver ran through him while he huddled frozen behind a tree, arrows waiting to cut him down as surely as Ashlin if he flinched so much as an inch. Marik strove to face the prospect of his death with the same equanimity he imaged the older mercenaries must command after their long years.

  Sounds from the trees drew his attention. Fraser gave commands in quiet yells. The words were indistinguishable to him, so they must be to the men who were not pinned down.

  An arrow sliced past him, from the other direction this time. He could see Landon kneeling beside cover further back from the clearing. When he noticed Marik looking at him, he paused a moment to raise a hand before nocking a new arrow to his string.

  Marik followed the veiled movement through dappled forest light, finding the other four archers in the Fourth silently moving north and south to cover the western clearing behind him. He could not see around his tree without risking the loss of his head, yet he understood Fraser had ordered his men to keep the rovers from advancing on the trapped fighters.

  “Hsst! Marik!” The words were hissed and low. He found Dietrik crouched behind the fallen tree Ashlin had dashed for.

  “What?” he hissed back, wincing from his voice sounding unnaturally loud.

  “Fraser says to stay put. Don’t move from your position!”

  “Do I look stupid?”

  “Stay calm! There’s more rovers than there should be. Those chaps must have sent a runner to fetch another group.”

  With a glance at the many arrows piercing tree trunks and littering the ground, Marik replied, “Tell me something I don’t already know!”

  “Stay still! You could be there for a while until we get you out of there. At the worst, you can sneak off once night falls.”

  “That’s four marks away!”

  “It wasn’t my idea. I’ve got to go.”

  Dietrik half-crawled, half-slithered across the ground, retreating to deeper cover. Marik leaned against his tree, grateful he had a wider one than Ashlin’s. He fumbled until he finally removed the water skin from his pack without the half-turn usually required. That might have exposed him to enemy fire. At least his bedroll had been left in a pile with the larger camp gear at the forest’s edge. Everything large enough to hinder movement through the trees remained there, but Fraser had insisted everyone take their packs for fear the rovers would circle behind and either steal or destroy them.

  Marik drank while he watched one of the other two prisoners, Bancroft he thought, whisper to a nearby blackberry bush. So he must also be receiving Fraser’s message. He looked sideways at Ashlin’s corpse lying beside him. Pity the message had not arrived sooner.

  For a time, the woods were silent, broken only by the occasional arrow shriek. The animals, sensing people rampaging around their home, had all vacated, proving once again their intelligence was not so far beneath man’s as men would like to believe. Yellow forest light slowly faded to gray while the sun descended. Marik’s legs itched as Ashlin’s blood cooled and dried against his skin.

  He could not sit because he needed to remain mobile in case a rover suddenly spun around his tree. As such, he had stood in one place for candlemarks, unable to loosen his cramped muscles by walking. If a rover did come upon him without warning, it was questionable if he could move quickly in any case.

  With nothing else to do, he counted arrows. Could he figure out how many archers there were and where they had been for their arrows to land as they had? Probably they had moved, but the exercise helped his mind avoid dwelling on Ashlin. It kept him from lingering on Ashlin’s endless, blank stare.

  Counting arrows kept his interest for only a few minutes before his mind refused such an easy distraction from his peril. His gaze invariably came to rest on Ashlin’s lifeless eyes. The flat quality they had assumed quickly sent his mind racing for a new distraction. He began studying the fletching on the shafts, identifying which birds the feathers had originated from and the crafting styles. There were at least two different techniques for affixing the feathers that he could see. Did that mean that the rover archers each made their own, or did Fielo have multiple fletchers stocking his armory…

  When he had exhausted all other possibilities, Marik spent time listening with his full concentration, trying to discern enemy movements. While he heard no enemies, he did hear his unit mates moving among the trees, taking new positions.

  After recounting, he found archers beyond their original five. He guessed Fraser had sent men running back to fetch the bows from the rovers they had cut down on their way to this clearing, arming the men who knew how to use them. Good thinking. Marik welcomed the extra cover.

  Night fell rapidly in the woods once the sun started its evening dive. Full dark finally arrived. The time had come to get the hells away from this tree, though he had appreciated its shelter. Marik had spent the last two candlemarks plotting his route across the ground to that fallen tree. From there he would follow Dietrik’s path. With care for the noise he might make, he dropped to all fours, ignoring his protesting muscles, wincing at the audible popping from his stiff joints. After
saying a silent farewell to Ashlin, he began his creeping crawl. He gritted his teeth when his mail faintly clinked. It held him to an agonizingly slow pace.

  Marik crawled due east at first, keeping his tree between himself and his enemy. No fire came in response. He kept inching forward. The trunk of the fallen grandfather lay ten feet to his left. Time to leave the line he had been drawing. With held breath, ready to sprint as fast as he could if need be, he slowly crawled toward his cover.

  Nothing. It seemed darkness chose to be his friend this night. Still, that was no reason to hurry and foolishly make a noise in haste. After three minutes of careful maneuvering, avoiding the fallen branches and twigs he had marked in his mind when he’d still been able to see them, he reached the trunk’s safety.

  For several minutes he rested, drinking from his water skin, preparing for the next stage. This part would be easier, having seen Dietrik do it already and knowing where to move. It went faster as well, requiring less of the painfully slow caution that had been his guard during the first leg. He crawled faster, following his friend’s path and soon he gained the deeper trees.

  Marik prepared to breathe a sigh in relief when a dagger’s cold steel suddenly pressed against his neck. A low voice simply asked, “Name?”

  It was Landon, unable to make out who he had caught in the dark and taking no chances. Exhaling a relieved sigh after all, he responded, “It’s me, you damned fool! Help me up, I think my knees are shot.”

  “Oh, good. I was hoping you would make it out of there. Here.” Landon offered a hand which he could not see until it hit him in the face. Marik took the gesture in the spirit it had been intended and grasped the hand.

  “Ooh! Damn it, I think they really are shot!”

  “There’s a log over here. Take a seat.”

  “Thanks. What’s news?”

  “Nothing for the last candlemark as far as I can tell. I think they may have retreated with night falling.”

  Probably. It would just be my luck to have gone through all that when they’d already left! “Anything else?”

  “Fraser says we’re pulling back regardless once all of you have been rescued.”

  Hating the implication he had been helpless, yet unable to refute it, Marik said, “Then that should be soon, right?”

  “We need to get Ashlin too. We don’t want to leave him behind if we don’t have to. And Sennet would kill us himself for leaving his equipment to rust.”

  “Who cares about equipment? Was he the only one?”

  “Only one of us I know about. There might have been others since him, but no one’s told me if that’s the case.”

  “Where’s Fraser? I should go report if he’s waiting for us.”

  “Don’t rush off. He’s set up checks every quarter mark so you can leave with the messenger. I need to stay here. He should be along soon.”

  “Fine. I hope tomorrow goes better than today.”

  “It wasn’t so bad. We took a decent toll on the enemy and only lost one man for the ten or so we took down. Plus we kept two rover parties entertained and away from Dornory’s group.”

  “They’d be better equipped to handle these small groups anyway.”

  “If they stood and fought, then Dornory’s force would be, yes. But they don’t. Rovers strike and run and can take quite a toll on a large force, especially with several groups working together.”

  “So we did good then? I don’t feel like celebrating a victory.”

  Landon laughed quietly. “A victory is the accomplishment of your objectives. We needed to keep the rovers away from Dornory’s primary force, and we’ve done exactly that. We don’t need to kill them all to do so.”

  “Then I hope the other units were as successful as us!”

  Marik had meant it as a sarcastic remark, but Landon replied, “So do I, my friend. So do I.”

  Chapter 14

  They encountered a different rover band the next day, or it might have been the one that had joined the first in the woods. This group traveled alertly, ducking under cover before Fraser could get the unit moving with any speed.

  Six bows with quivers had been recovered from yesterday’s skirmish. With the five men carrying bows as part of their regular arsenal it meant half of the twenty-two remaining unit men plus the sergeant were now so armed. The original five had been able to recover most of their arrows, meaning their quivers still held nearly their thirty arrow capacity. Unfortunately, even with the shafts recovered from the rover fighters whose bows had broken during the fighting, the allotment for the six newly armed archers worked out to seven meager arrows each.

  Still, it increased the unit’s capability so they would be better prepared to take out the next rover party. Marik only wished they had extra arrows.

  “Are you all right, mate?” Dietrik’s concern was palpable.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “That was the first time in battle for you, wasn’t it?”

  “If you’re wondering whether I’ll start throwing up because I saw a man get killed, don’t bother. I’m fine.”

  “Then what’s got you down?”

  “Nothing, like I said. I’m just thinking.”

  “Thinking, eh? About what?”

  “Something Landon told me back at Dornshold. Dornory wanted to keep quiet about the fact he was hiring mercs, right?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “But Fielo is sure to know about it by now. Probably he knew a long time ago.”

  “That’s no surprise. What’s the point?”

  “Dornory hired us because he knew there’d be fighting. We’re taking the point in dealing with Fielo’s men so Dornory and his own forces can get to the dam unmolested.”

  “And?”

  “So if Fielo knows all this, then why isn’t he sending his men out to deal with us and Dornory? Is he going to let us trespass across his land with nothing to say and waste his men?”

  “Not at all. These harassment troupes are trying not to engage us in close combat. That’s their purpose as strike and run forces.”

  “But that still means we’re going to arrive at the dam and cause trouble. I’ve been wondering if Fielo’s planning a massive battle against us there.”

  “His own men do outnumber Dornory’s. I gather that’s why he had the brass to put the dam up in the first place.”

  “Which is why Dornory hired us, remember? But if Fielo knows about the contract with the Kings, then would he still be confident in an all out battle?”

  “Hmm.”

  “I’ve been wondering. Landon told me both of these barons are sure to have spy rings and information networks set up against each other so they know what the other is up to.”

  “Intrigue,” Dietrik shrugged. “It’s nothing new in the upper classes, or the armed forces of the upper classes for that matter.”

  “But it depends on secrecy. If Fielo discovered Dornory’s network, he might be able to do what he wants and keep it secret. Or make them think a fake operation is going on to mislead them.”

  “That’s called disinformation.”

  “Whatever you call it, it means Dornory might not have all the cards he needs to win this hand, even with the Kings.”

  “Perhaps, but people who spy on their enemies usually also spy on their spies to prevent them from turning double. The redundants can usually ferret out that sort of mischief and get word back to their employer. And with the Kings’ forces here, the numbers should be about equal.”

  “Then why is he letting us march across his turf with only bee stings to annoy us?”

  “Well, I must admit that is a separate issue altogether. Now you’ve got me wondering.”

  “He must have a plan working,” Marik stated with conviction.

  “I suppose, but you always have to be ready for anything in this line of work. You can bet both Fraser and Earnell aren’t taking Dornory’s word on Fielo’s forces for granted.”

  “I only want to be prepared. That’s
all I ask.”

  “We will be, mate. This isn’t the first campaign for either of those chaps. They know their onions.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Now what?”

  “Nothing. Thinking about onions.”

  “Next meal isn’t until sundown when we dig in for the night.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I thought—“

  “Never mind! Forget it!”

  “If you say so.”

  * * * * *

  “Men to the north!” A Fourth Unit man Marik did not know well called this out loudly. Marik squinted, unable to see them at first before finally spotting their movement.

  They were in the open fields, the nearest forested area six miles behind them. A tree line decorated the distance. It would require an entire day’s march to reach it. The Fourth Unit followed a dry streambed that would have flowed to the south except for the years of drought. Fraser figured to rendezvous with Dornory’s force in two days. That would place them a full day’s march south of Fielo’s dam.

  Though farmers had planted several of the fields they walked past, no road existed which meant a rough march across uneven ground. No buildings were visible and except for the earthen rows striping the plowed fields, Marik could have believed themselves a hundred miles from civilization. The only landmark visible, other than the farmers’ fields, was a wide rock promontory jutting up to the west. It stood alone, only thirty feet tall, looking like a bread crust dropped by a careless titan.

  The entire Fourth Unit watched the men to their north. It soon became apparent they were being pursued by a separate force. Unable to make out any markings or heraldry that might identify them, Marik’s muscles tensed, preparing for anything.

  Fraser watched like a hawk. Suddenly he shouted, “Everyone with a bow to the front! Hold them visible, but not at the ready! Everyone else get behind the archers and line up in a loose marching formation!”

  Marik hastened to secure a position behind Landon in the rough five-by-four configuration the unit formed. Two rows of bowmen, then two rows of hand-to-hand fighters with the remaining two men taking up the rear. Fraser walked in front. In the third row, Marik peered between Landon and Edwin.